30 Projects, Week 1
First off, I can already tell that I’ll be re-defining what a project is. There were a lot of things on my list. Second of all, it’s been a struggle lately to go to the gym, cook healthy food, and keep up with house work, let alone do remodeling on weeknights. But today I doubled up at the gym, am now blogging, and did some stuff to the house! But, sorry Mom, the dishes are gonna sit in the sink. Anyways, here are the tasks I’ve completed:
- I cleaned out the junk side of my closet, and the floor on the clothes side. I found some real gems, like pieces of the Pontiac that broke off and put in a box to reattach later. Now some of my random crap is in control and I’m ready to add the missing baseboards, robe hooks, and clothes bar. Also note that I built more twice as many shoe shelves as I can fill.
- The Irishman seemed to have forgotten to paint the back sides of all the kitchen cabinet doors that are the hardest to take down. I’ve had them leaning against a wall for a month. Now the back sides are all painted and they’re hanging again. The fronts will be painted in place on a separate item. (He also started to paint a bunch of his off-cuts because he didn’t check whether they were doors or not. Since I paid for that work, I’ve finished painting them to use them as extra shelves. But that’s not finished yet.)
- I helped my roommate move out. Setting up my guest room is on hold until I can borrow the Suburban, or use my parents’ car and some bungee cords on a dry day.
- The bookcase in my living room had an open top. It was supposed to fit tight to an 8-foot ceiling, but because I have higher ceilings, I closed it up with a piece of scrap plywood that I stained. The color is too dark but you can only tell because I had the flash on.
The edges of the plywood look pretty bad but I’ll fix that once I retrieve my spare mahogany boards from the lumber-hoard.
- Here, I’ll let you see how much I cared about my containers this spring.
I finally weeded them. Believe it or not, I had a boxwood and a camellia hiding behind those weeds. The vegetables on the wall aren’t mine. The neighbors borrowed my pots.
So, even with this rather generous re-numbering and staying home on a holiday weekend, I am a little behind one project per day. Do you think I’ll make it?
No Responses
Do I think you’ll make it? Well, I’m pretty sure that you have a better shot at it than I would if I were given the same challenge! I’m impressed so far…
Well even if I don’t, I should have the perimeter of my living room cleared out by Christmas
Progress is progress – don’t let impossible dreams hold you back. Embrace the moment. Etc., etc., etc.
That number was ambitious to say the least! Even if you don’t reach it, you’ll still be way ahead of where you were. I now regret not being more productive this summer, because now that school started, I have no time to do anything other than school related work.
It wasn’t my number; I’m participating in someone else’s challenge. Left to my own devices, I’d have doubled the list and given myself until the end of March to finish it.
At least your summer was fun! I guess you have too much integrity to give your kids Scantrons and finish your stuff?
I agree that you definitely need to redefine what is a project that can reasonably be done in a day (or evening). For example, painting and putting up all the kitchen cabinet doors in one day is unreasonable. Painting the backs of the doors in one evening and reinstalling them the next day is more reasonable. They are actually two different projects with two different sets of tools (painting tools, power tools) that need to be cleaned up and put away at the end of the project. Also, you should have one evening a week that you do no projects but just have fun going somewhere, don’t you think?
Well, I definitely don’t want to let this challenge drive me crazy, especially when the projects that are really bothering me and/or need to be done before winter might only total up to 15. But I decided to do this with a good faith effort to get up to 30. We’ll see how I end up balancing sanity with productivity.
We’re all pulling for you!
So far, so good! You saw my one measly project. But are we going to complete this challenge? You bet we are. 🙂
Your pot garden looks like our pot garden – scraggly and full of weeds. It’s funny your neighbor’s used your pots to plant a successful veggie garden 🙂 I need to go weed my pot garden for the fall… I guess container garden is a better way to describe it than pot garden, because that might raise eyebrows.